The Almaty City Development Centre inspected the city’s accommodation facilities by the «Secret Buyer» program.
«The objects were evaluated in six criteria (greeting, identification of needs, communication and sales, conflict management and objections, farewell and general comments). The final evaluation was attributed on four levels of client orientation – perfect, well, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory» – explained by the Chairman of the Board of the Centre, Zhanna Tulegenova.
A total of 84 accommodation facility of Almaty City were surveyed and successfully selected under the Partnership Programme «Recommended by 28-th Winter Universiade Almaty-2017«. In fact, the Partnership Programme provides for voluntary participation of hotels, hostels, catering facilities located in Almaty. The programme was initiated by the administration of the city with the Directorate of Universiade, KTA, CAGIR and the Almaty Restaurateur Alliance.
Zhanna Tulegenova, in her accounting report, described the results of the study. According to it, 29 of 84 accommodation facilities (or 35%) were evaluated «Perfect«, 35 (or 42%) «Well«, and 20 (or 23%) were «satisfactory«. In fact, there are no accommodation facilities that have been assessed unsatisfactory. It follows that, the most part, 63 of 83 (or 77 per cent) of the accommodation facilities also demonstrated the quality of the service, above the 90-point threshold.
«Thus, the «Perfect» mark is assigned to 1 facility of 5* category, 5 facilities of 4* category, 12 facilities of 3* category, 1 facility without category. It is noteworthy that the «Perfect» evaluation has also been assigned to 10 hostels, which’s great hospitality is no doubtable and they stand at the same level as five star hotels. They are the «Best-3» hostel, «Hostel DOM», «hello Hostel» etc.«- mentioned Zh. Tulegenova.
Among the locations with the «Good» mark are 7 facilities of 4* category, 4 facilities of 3* category, 11 facilities without category and 13 hostels. This means that these facilities need to develop a phase of identification of needs and a farewell phase.
In general, the study showed that the hotels of 5* category had proven in practice, their compliance to the high standards of guest service, by their perfect evaluation. Not all 4 stars hotels showed the same high level of service, which questioned their conformity with the stated level and category. Meanwhile 3 stars hotels showed a positive picture. Only 3 facilities in this category were assessed satisfactorily, and remaining 16 facilities got above the 90 points threshold.
Practice and rating show that some hotels with category 3* are much better at service level than hotels 4*.
The hotels without category represent the majority of the list of satisfactory estimates. 7 facilities are below the threshold, 11 facilities received good and only 1 perfect grades. These facilities should be given priority to the quality of the service.
The hostels were evenly placed between satisfactory grades and perfect. 10 hostels got a perfect grade. This suggests that even in the lowest-equipped and cheap hotels, there may be a high level of service.
In the future, according to Zhanna Tulegenova, such studies will be carried out in a systematic manner. «This will help to preserve and improve the position of the city as a client-oriented cities of Kazakhstan,«-she explained.
